The present invention enhances the attractiveness and excitement of live card games in general, and the card game known as "21" or blackjack in particular, by adding to such games a large jackpot component which is comparable in size to large jackpots which are now routinely won in casinos when playing slot machines large numbers of which are combined in a single, enhanced jackpot payoff system.
The creation of large jackpots with slot machines is well known and relatively easy because of the large number of such machines which are in operation and the ease with which these machines can be electronically combined. The large jackpots are generated by accumulating a portion of each bet placed in each machine on the system and establishing sufficiently low odds for winning the jackpot that the likelihood of winning the jackpot on any single game becomes extremely small. The electromechanical character of the machines and the absence of an intervening dealer who participates in each game on the part of the casino makes it relatively easy to generate large jackpots, say, in excess of $1 million.
The same is not true for live card games. Such games are neither mechanically nor electrically played, but with a dealer who represents the house (casino). This increases the difficulty of retaining parts of the bets placed during the games and accumulating them in a jackpot, with high odds against winning it. In addition, in live card games the dealer must determine when a player has a jackpot winning hand, which further complicates the setup and generation of truly large jackpots.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,861,041, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a live card game, primarily poker or blackjack, which has a jackpot component. However, this patent only discloses to accumulate a jackpot based on bets placed on a single card game for the simple reason that nobody can keep track of bets placed on multiple tables in the casino, much less placed on multiple tables in different gaming establishments within a given locality, be this a single city or an entire state or country.
Although the live card game disclosed in the '041 patent is capable of generating a jackpot, it is necessarily of only modest size for two reasons. First, the number of players that may participate in the jackpot is limited to the number of players on a particular table. Secondly, especially for blackjack, the probability of reaching 21 even with the combination of cards which has the smallest probability of reaching this number is relatively high. Consequently, players will win the jackpot in the system disclosed in the '041 patent quite frequently so that there is never enough time to accumulate more than a modest jackpot at best.
As a result, live card games could never match the large size of jackpots that can be won when playing mechanical or video slot machines, for example. Even though playing live card games is very popular, at least in part because when playing a card game a player can utilize his skill and knowledge of the game to at least make him believe he can enhance his chances of winning, he never has the chance to win large sums of money which are even remotely comparable to the multi-million dollar jackpots that are frequently paid out by casinos which participate in systems made up of thousands or tens of thousands of slot machines all of which pay a percentage of the bets into a common jackpot pool.
Thus, to enhance the attractiveness of live card games and to provide greater player satisfaction, there is a need to modify live card games so that truly large jackpots; e.g. in excess of $100,000 or $1 million, for example, can be won and, of course, there is a need for a system which can accomplish this.